It is not what you think it is!
On this Golden Nugget for The ROI Online Podcast, author and story expert Michael Hauge shares with us how to tell your success story.
The personal side seems like the main difference between telling a story and a success story. You can tell any story about yourself because everyone has at least one personal experience that deserves to be shared with others. On the other hand, when you tell your personal success story, you should never forget that you can only be credited with success, followed by personal development and personal growth.
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Michael tells us that the first thing you want to do is understand no one wants to hear your life story.
Okay, this might sound weird but when you think about it, maybe you're willing to sit up for the whole thing, but when someone is there looking for your guidance, they don't want to know necessarily where you were born and all the degrees you got, in other words, even if you've had a fascinating life, that's really not what everybody's there to hear.
So what is it that people want to hear?
People want to hear is, whatever you did whatever happened to you, that led you to the expertise that you're now presenting, whatever you did that helped you overcome that problem that they're solving.
Some questions you can answer to assure people will engage are:
- How did you come to decide you wanted to do what you do? What mistakes did you make when you were trying?
- What was the process you finally went through that worked?
- What were the obstacles you had to overcome because you want to keep the conflict, and how did you do that?
- And we want to experience the victory you felt when you finally reached your goal, whichever that might be.
It has to be authentic, personal, and true.
Interestingly, personal stories are the ones that resonate most with people.
And you have to try to make the pattern and the thread in your story something very compelling about a personal struggle or problem that you overcame by applying some other personal insight, or some personal wisdom that you came across in your life.
The personal success story is the one that's going to get you the most attention. And it'll be the one where people go, "Wow! I want to know what he did." Because at the end of the day, people don't always trust a stranger's personal advice. So if you can personalize your story so they see that personal side, and personal struggle you've gone through in your life, it's going to give them some level of trust.
So on a final note, if your story is hard, it makes it a story worth telling in business, it's a story that's going to help the prospect decide to follow your guidance, and follow the steps that you're outlining.
